I question things which people take for granted. I would have been that kid who said the emperor was naked. In real life that kid would probably have been lynched, but I'll take my chances...
I believe truth inherently valuable, no matter how well intentioned the ideology it dispels may be.
I also write about random interesting things from my personal life.

26 February 2009

FemDom vs. Feminism: Power doesn't come from penetration (and other complaints about porn)

Feb 26, 2009

FemDom vs. Feminism: Power doesn't come from penetration (and other complaints about porn)

What I was searching for doesn't seem all that extreme or strange.

Something where the female was in control, and the focus was on her getting
whatever she wanted.
There is plenty of the inverse. Too much. There is also of course a
healthy amount where no one is dominant, the majority in fact.
Female dominated (or FemDom for short) is shunted off to the side as a fetish,
a subset of BDSM (bondage domination/submission sado-masochism).

Of course male dominated BDSM exists too, and occasionally is even pretty good. But there is also lots of male
dominated porn which doesn't fall under the BDSM category. Its regular
sex, with no pain or bondage involved, but the guy is clearly in control of the
situation, and his partner is there to please him. In and of itself, I'd
have no problem with that - so long as it were balanced.

In femdom, almost invariably, at some point the mistress dons a strap-on and
penetrates her slave. I realize plenty of real life people are into this,
and that it can be pleasurable for the guy, an interesting fantasy for the
girl. But every time? If the guy is only there to please her,
whether he enjoys any part of the experience should be mostly irrelevant.
And she doesn't actually get any direct stimulation of her own from this
act. From the stand point of her sexual pleasure, it's kind of
pointless. It may be fun, but it's not exactly sex. Were it really
just an alternate form of sex, it would be common (or at least exist occasionally)
in genres other than femdom. That it is confined to that subset means
there is an assumption that the act of penetration itself is not just
masculine, but dominating.
And that assumption in turn implies that simply via their biology, women are
inherently subjects in every sex act.

I have always subscribed to the idea that feminism is nothing more than the
"radical" notion that women are people. Not that women are
men. Not that women are capable of being men. That women are
people, and men are people, and, as Pete says in 'The Muppets take Manhattan, "Peoples is peoples". Claiming that women are
capable of doing anything men are doing is also the suggestion that men should
be the standard by which people are measured. Similarly, a woman should
not have to artificially take on an approximation of male biology in order to
be (or appear) strong, confident, or dominate. One could just as easily re-think
male penetration as female envelopment.
She just needs to be the one in control.

Its rare for their to be any ordinary penetration in femdom porn - you know,
the one physical act which is, in the most literal sense, actually sex.
I admit that I am not, and never have been, a woman, but I tend to trust my
partners, and in my experience, women don't only have intercourse for the sake
of their partners. They actually enjoy it. Which leads me to
suspect that, if she were given free reign to do whatever she felt like, it's
not altogether unlikely that intercourse would be an item on the agenda.
This doesn't mean she has to cede control. In fact, he needn't even have
his limbs free.

Some would point out that it would be physically impossible if he were not
aroused, but arousal does not equal consent. Barring artificial
lubricant, it is pretty important that the female be aroused too - the male is
a much greater risk of severe physical injury if intercourse takes place with
neither natural nor artificial lubrication. Terrible, gruesome
possibilities which I learned about in my emergency medical technician
class. Things which I won't subject you to and I strongly advice against
looking up (let this be a warning to would be rapists everywhere).
For that matter, another act generally taken as an example of male domination,
the blow job, consists of a guy trusting some of his most delicate parts and
symbol of his very manhood to her jaw - which has the highest strength-to-size
ratio of any muscle in the human body, and is capable of concentrating 280lbs
of force onto incisors designed specifically to bite through things. Who
really has the power in that situation?
No, seriously. Think about that for a second...A
woman has complete and total control not only over a man's pleasure and
satisfaction, but is in a position to cripple him for life, and this is
almost universally seen as a submissive act, even if it is voluntary.

I believe it is this same basic, and severely flawed, premise which makes some
people claim that porn is inherently disrespectful to women. Consider
this scenario: a heterosexual couple, who love, respect, and are
attracted to each other, decide to have consensual sex. Pretty
ordinary, and very few people will claim there is anything wrong with
that. Now say they decide to videotape themselves. Same exact people,
same exact act. Now say they later decide to sell that video on the
internet. Suddenly (according to many), it becomes disrespectful,
demeaning, objectifying, dehumanizing - primarily, if not entirely, to
the female.

The unspoken - unconscious - assumption is that sex
itself, by its very mechanism, is inherently disrespectful to
women. The issue at this point is not with media or society, it is with
biology. If you are calling biology sexist, well, that is pretty
blatant misogyny.The only type of true feminism there is is sex-positive feminism,
because woman are people, and people have sex parts and enjoy having sex.
Everything living thing (well, the vast majority of multi-cellular organisms),
from mammals to fish to insects to plants to fungus, is sexual. To be
anti sex, you are both anti-life, (and, since women are alive) anti-feminist.

It just has me baffled and annoyed, and its on the same general topic.
Why the hell does every porn producer, past and present, large and small,
professional and amateur, believe that it is absolutely vital that the viewer
get physical proof of the guys orgasm, every single time?
I mean, I enjoy a good bukkake movie as much as the next guy, but come
on! Everytime? Why do I care if he's faking it? It could not
be more obvious that it's set up - no matter how good the actors are, how
realistic the setting and script, even if it is entirely unscripted: there's a
guy standing there with a camera, or else we wouldn't be able to be
watching. So it's a situation of suspended disbelief as it is. Dear
god why, why(!), would a guy who is having spectacularly good sex with a
beautiful woman stop, at the last possible moment, take the time to take off
the condom, and then cum, not in her mouth, but toward it?!?! Or, if she
is giving him oral, and she is letting him cum in her mouth anyway, who would
finish by hand and not have her mouth around him at the end? It makes the
whole experience a let down, its unsatisfying. At that last moment you
want more than ever to be IN; and if I am trying to enjoy what the actors are
doing vicariously than they need to at least pretend to be focused on their own
pleasure instead of obviously acting for the camera.
It gets worse. Sometimes there are scenes where he really cums while in
her mouth. But then, without exception, she opens her mouth to show us,
or snowballs, or drips it into her hand. Anything so that the viewer can
see cum. And there is a subset of porn, "creampie", where the
guy cums inside of her the traditional way (imagine that, actually having real
sex, to its most natural completion, is a subset, as though it were a
fetish!?). And in those, the camera always takes time after wards to
watch it drip out again.
I want to see and hear her when she cums! I want to watch them enjoying
each other in every possible way. I don't want to see extreme close-ups
of cum. Its just not that sexy. Please excuse the expression, but,
as a guy, wanting to look at extreme close-ups of cum seems kind of gay.
Not that there's anything wrong with, but I don't happen to be (and I have to
assume most guys watching straight porn aren't either)

These ridiculous trends have gotten to be so prevalent you see the same
patterns almost universally in even amateur porn (i.e. non-professional actors
and small independent production companies), and is all to common in
home-produced porn as well.

This has been aggravating me to no end for years, and now that I am single it
is all the more vexing.
I am afraid the only option is that I become a producer myself, and institute
the changes that we all want to see. When it becomes wildly successful,
it will be a sign to the rest of the industry to follow suit, and then I can go
back to being an environmentally friendly hauler/mover/handyman. It
wouldn't be my first foray into the adult industry, and I think I am getting
old enough to handle the responsibility of producer.
Then again, legally as producer you can't actually be involved in the scene (if
you were, since you are paying the actors, that would make the transaction
prostitution). That could make the whole single thing even more
vexing. Ah well. I guess we will just have to stick with the rare well
done home made porn, at least for now.

6 comments:

Man I hear you. I am an old man and this "pulling out and cumming all over the room" has always pissed me off royally. I have never understood why anyone would think this was particularly arousing, and like you, I am more interested in the illusion of passion than proof the bastard actually came. I also hate the trend of male pubic shaving in even "amature" videos. I don't find an adult that looks like a nine year old boy particularly arousing either. It is hilarious when the male actor is supposed to be a big macho trucker, marine or construction worker and he whips off the drawers and whoa, pre-pubescent boy! I can just see a marine going into the group showers looking like that, think he wouldn't have a rough time? I don't like the ladies not having a little bush either. I don't think it has to look like the backwoods of Arkansas, but again, I am not turned on by pre-pubescent girls either.

Funny thing though - I totally get shaving. I shave for the same reason I shave my armpits - it keeps smell to a minimum, so I can shower every couple days, instead of twice a day, and can avoid antiperspirant.I know it supposedly evolved to catch pheromones, but that was millions of years before we invented clothes, and the combination makes it build up too much.

I prefer my partner does too, for that reason, because getting tiny hairs in my throat makes giving oral sex a lot less fun, and because it can be scratchy against my more delicate parts.

In either case it has nothing to do with aesthetics.

I do understand the idea that it makes a person seem juvenile though - I always thought it strange that we expect the men in authoritative roles - police, soldiers, business executives - to shave their faces, there by looking more like children or women.

I love femdom, it's my favorite form of porn. I wish all porn scenes had confident women in it who take initiative. I personally don't mind being dominated by a woman in the bedroom as well. However, I don't entirely agree with your viewpoints on penetration in "regular porn" being too male dominating. I think it is a fair representation of how people have sex in the real world. You just can't get around the fact that men have the penis and woman have the "receiving" vagina. Because men are "giving it" they are naturally the ones to take initiative. It's really that simple.

"You just can't get around the fact that men have the penis and woman have the "receiving" vagina. Because men are "giving it" they are naturally the ones to take initiative. It's really that simple. "

I could not possibly disagree with you more. In fact, that is the entire point of my essay.I realize that your viewpoint is the dominate viewpoint in our culture, but the dominate viewpoint is wrong.

First off, in my own personal experience, in all but one instance, every single woman I have slept with has been the one to initiate with me first.

Think about this in terms of domination fetish. Take a guy, bind him hand and foot. He is blindfolded and gagged. He is completely helpless. A woman comes along and climbs on top of him and fucks him. He is completely unable to control or stop what's happening, or to even consent or not. This is not "penetration", in the sense of something forcing it's way into another thing - he is not doing anything to her. This is "envelopment" - she is putting her sex parts around his.

The terms "giving" and "receiving" imply an active and a passive partner, but there is nothing fundamental about how sex works that makes that true in reality. In some positions the male is able to control the movement more, in others the female is more in control, and in still others both are equally able to move relative to the other.

If there is really any doubt that our concepts of power dynamics in sexuality are purely social, and not at all biological, consider fellatio.The standard image that comes to most peoples mind is a man (with a big powerful erection!) standing up, a woman on her knees, giving him pleasure. By default we interpret that as a male dominate situation.

But lets step back a second, and look at this situation objectively.First of all, the male genitals aren't "powerful" at all. Having no bones or muscles, it is one of the most vulnerable of all body parts, particularly susceptible to both injury and pain. You know what is literally powerful? The human jaw, which has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any muscle, tipped with teeth which are stronger than bones - roughly as strong as steel. In addition to being one tiny chomp away from literally emasculating him, she also has nearly total control over when - and if - he ends up satisfied. She can just choose to stop, anytime, for any reason.Who really has the power in that situation?

There are two reasons that men tend to take the initiative.One is biological - sex drive, in both men and women, is controlled by testosterone, and men have more of it than women. However, unlike physical sex, hormone levels vary greatly, both by the individual and over time, and there are millions of women who have higher sex drives than millions of men.The much more significant reason is that for thousands of years, in nearly every major culture, people have been repeating what you said. If everyone keeps saying the same thing, people internalize it, and we tend to act out whatever is expected of us. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Its really that simple.

Regarding your first point about strap on sex being not pleasurable for the giver, I beg to differ. I am a bisexual woman who fantasizes extensively about pegging men. The pleasure is psychological - when I put myself in that role, and grind my clit up against the base of the dildo, I can definitely have an orgasm in that way. Once I had an incredibly realistic dream of possessing my own penis. It's "psychic dick" - like a phantom limb for an amputee.

" The pleasure is psychological "that's kind of my point. You are saying that part of it is putting yourself "in that role".

I understand that a female can enjoy taking on the physical properties of a male, just as a man can enjoy dressing up in lingerie and heels and acting out a "feminine" role.

I don't think there is anything wrong with finding excitement and pleasure in using the traditional ways of thinking as a basis for subversion; the problem I have is with it being the only thing we can imagine.

I am questioning why a female can't be "in that role" of giver, of one in control, without taking on the physical properties of a male.